Bessette/Pitney’s AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: DELIBERATION, DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP reviews the idea of "deliberative democracy." Building on the book, this blog offers insights, analysis, and facts about recent events.

When it comes to following political conventions, Twitter may soon trump television.

TV viewership for last week's Republican National Convention dropped sharply from 2008, suggesting interest in this presidential race falls short of some past contests. But the convention was a hit online and on social networks, the latest evidence of the political conversation's gradual migration from traditional media to the Web.

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Both parties have offered live streaming feeds of the conventions online, and the RNC's convention YouTube channel received 2.8 million video views. Several TV and print news organizations are also providing streaming video and opportunities for online engagement around the convention through their websites and Facebook pages. Search giant Google also has created dedicated convention pages.

The GOP convention was one of the most talked about news events of the year on Facebook, according to data analysis provided by the company. But even there, the average audience was older — the speeches by Mitt Romney, Ann Romney and actor Clinton Eastwood drew the most buzz among people over 55. Only Ryan's speech drew a younger discussion on Facebook.

Twitter, the social networking hub where information is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets, has become an influential media force in the convention after being little more than a blip in 2008. That year, the two conventions together drew just 365,000 tweets. This year's Republican convention alone drew 5 million tweets.

Romney's acceptance speech peaked at 14,300 tweets per minute to make it the most tweeted political event of 2012. The speech eclipsed Obama's State of the Union address in January, which drew about 14,100 tweets a minute.